William Henry Bishop

“ The orange-grove is lovely at all times, mysterious when the long alleys are dark against the red sunset, the fruit glimmering like a feast of lanterns at twilight; and in the pleasant mornings sparkling among the glossy leaves like little suns newly risen; while we catch the perfume of blossoms heralding in a new crop, though the last still hangs upon the bough. Here and there is an example of the enormous shaddock, which resembles the orange in appearance but the lemon in character. ”

“ It is a mere eyelet—a strait, giving access to a wide expanse of bay. So happy is the opening, and commodious the shelter afforded, that the reversal of the churlishness prevailing up to this point seems miraculous.
There is no doubt, when once the site is understood, as to why San Francisco is located just where it is. It has the only natural harbor between Astoria, Oregon, to the north, and San Diego, to the south. It bears, besides, with this advantage, such a relation to the resources of the back country, that it could not escape a destiny of greatness. ”

“ A considerable part of the cargoes was the fine large red earthen jars and dishes we saw at Mexico, which are made at Texcoco. The piled-up bales and pottery, the strange figures, and the flashing poles of one of these craft, coming on, make it a highly original and spirited subject.
Then we fell in with one of the curiosities of the lake—disbelieved in by some—swarms of the mosca, a little water-fly, so thickly settled on the water that we took them for flats and reefs. They resemble mosquitoes, but neither sting nor even alight on the boat. ”

“ One of the most charming of all the mansions I saw stood nearly opposite our hotel, and was faced up entirely with china tiles, chiefly blue and white, and set with old bronze balconies, as dainty and quaint as a dwelling in fairy-land. I examined the interior of this house also, and found it faced within as well with the same simple, Moorish-looking, tiles, in staircase walls, ceilings, and even the high, banked-up furnace, or range, in the kitchen. An affable major-domo occupied his leisure with painting, in a large library on the ground-floor. ”

“ Charles's-day, in early November, a memorial service is held, attended by all the shabby Spanish-Indian life remaining in the country round about. The place is unique. It seems even more lonely than ruins of the same kind in the mother country, through standing amid surroundings of such a different class. Nothing is more conducive to pensiveness of a pleasant kind than, lying within this ruined enclosure, to watch the waving in the wind of the long grasses on its walls and listen to the plash of the sea on the shore, but a few steps distant. ”

“ The bull has tasted blood, and is now savage without contradiction. In the next round perhaps he disembowels a horse, unseats the rider, and chases him to the barrier. The steed does not die at once, but careers wildly around the ring till caught by the lassoers. The arena is full of dust and turmoil; everything flies before the horned enemy, his eye almost emitting lurid sparks, and his long tail streaming in the air. ”

“ OLD MISSION AT SAN DIEGO.
The plaza has a toppling flag-staff, a decayed music-stand, and vestiges of a number of burned edifices, which have never been worth anybody's while to build up again. The "Merchants' Exchange" will never supply cocktails to thirsty soul again; the Cosmopolitan Hotel is without a guest; whole rows of weather-beaten adobes—whole quarters—stand vacant. It should be a great place for ghosts. But perhaps they do not care for one another's society. ”

“ Cows had gone to sleep in upland pastures, and one occasionally loomed up, a mysterious shape, in the path and took herself out of the way. The rays of a clouded moon gleamed now and then on a white patch of the lake, but the city seemed to have vanished out of existence. At last, however, a dim light in a dome, then a barking of dogs, and audible human voices. All this time there had been neither house nor hut. It was after nine o'clock. I came close up to one of the formal lines of trees, opened a gate in it, and was in the midst of Iguala. ”

“ Though the resident of San Francisco feels called upon to complain of its present stagnation, the bare existence of such a place strikes the new-comer with amazement.
Its air is not ephemeral, but of a fine, massive gravity. Its shops are filled with costly goods, its streets with comely, beautifully dressed women. It has an art and literature. Private galleries contain foreign modern pictures of the best class. Some local artists have made for themselves a more than local reputation. ”

“ The Mexican merchant does not go into a fine calculation of the proportionate value of each item of a foreign invoice, but "lumps" the profit he thinks he ought to receive on the whole. Some articles, in consequence, can be bought at less than their real value, while others, in compensation, are exorbitantly advanced.
It is the smaller trade, and that most removed from metropolitan influences, which is the gayest and most entertaining as a spectacle. How many picturesque market scenes does not one linger in! Each community has its own market-day, not to interfere with others. ”

“ We passed an occasional lonely farm known as a "milk ranch," or "chicken ranch." There are no farms in California: no matter how small the tract is, it is always a ranch.
In the strong, warm sunshine chance objects on the bare slopes cast intense, purplish shadows. That of a distant tree is as dark as if a pit had been dug under it. That of a bird, flying low, is followed as distinctly as the bird itself. ”

“ It abounded in interesting orchids, and there was an undergrowth of coffee run wild, the glossy green of its leaves as shining as if just wet by rain. There was not that excessive tangle and luxuriance supposed to be characteristic of the tropics; our own woods are quite as rampant. All that is found, you learn, in Tehuantepec, for instance, and Central America. There tree-growths seize upon a dwelling, crunch its bones, as it were, and bear up part of the walls into the air; and it is vegetable more than animal life that is feared. ”

“ As a general remark, the manners of the lower class of the country are much better than ours, and those of the upper are not as good—not as often based upon real kindliness of heart and genuine desire to be of service. The Mexican promises a hundred things which he has no intention, often no ability, of performing. The American is not without his faults—the more's the pity—but in a general way he aims to do as he agrees. He will often make against the Mexican the reproach of a certain slipperiness a lack of appreciation of the importance of adhering to his word. ”

“ But by this time our toro has learned a certain amount of logic; he begins to consider how little he gains in all this fierce fight and chase. He is weakened by his wounds and sensible of their pain. He now stands and meditates before making his dashes, and even inclines to let some of his affronts go unavenged.
Now is the time for the banderilleros. These are a new group of participants, beautifully dressed, light, deft, and swift on their feet. Their business is to torment the bull by thrusting into him long barbed darts, with streamers, or decoration of gay-colored tissue-papers. ”

“ If there be sincerity in the manifestations of desire for progress, and aid from without, Mexico must sweep away narrow and benighted restrictions. If outside capital be demanded for works of amelioration and embellishment, how can it be expected at such a price?
And why, in the name of goodness, in this enlightened day, should not the foreigner be put upon the same footing as the native in these matters, and allowed to hold property wherever he will throughout the civilized world? ”

“ This journey lengthened out into a long, desultory ramble, beginning with Cuba, and, after Mexico, concluding with the most remote, novel, and characteristic of our own possessions on the Pacific slope. There is unity of subject, and even a certain pathos, in the recollection that this latter was once Mexican territory also. Its most obvious basis of life is still Spanish, and it may be sentimentally considered a kind of Alsace-Lorraine—a part of the sister republic when it was well-nigh as large and powerful as ourselves. ”

“ There is absolutely no remedy for oppressive domination but in rebellion. With the best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what has happened in the past may happen again. If there be any statesmanship in Mexico, may we not hope to see some champion arise to remedy this, instruct the masses in their rights, enumerate and register them, and insure them the first essential of a free government—an accurate and unfettered suffrage? ”

“ They are to be encouraged to be no longer satisfied with a bare subsistence for themselves, but to produce from their fertile lands a surplus, for which a market is now opened. They are to trade upon it and become amassers of wealth.
No less than 10,000 miles of railways are spread over what were once the old Mexican provinces of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and Texas. Railways have brought these out of the nothingness in which they recently lay so vast and desolate. ”

“ As I still insisted upon the unreasonableness of this notion, the colonel continued: "Even granting that you are sincere in what you say of the wishes of your people, I feel that it is the manifest destiny of Mexico to be taken by the United States. In former times the Latin races ruled the world, but in this and the coming ages the Saxon race will do it. You are a strong, commercial people, and commerce is the breath of the nostrils of modern civilization. ”

“ The great houses on the hill, like almost all the residences of the city, are of wood. It seems a pity, considering the money spent, that this should be so. It is attributed to the superior warmth and dryness of wood in so moist and cool a climate, and also to its security against the shock of earthquakes. Whatever be the reason, the San Francisco Crœsuses have reared for themselves palaces which might be swept off at a breath and leave no trace of their existence. Their architecture has nothing to commend it to favor. They are large, rather over-ornate, and of no particular style. ”

“ In the foreground you see lazy ox-wains, a prospector, perhaps, with his pots and kettles, and a mounted Mexican towing by a lariat a bull, which ducks its head in vain resistance. From a distance it is thoroughly foreign, and of attractive promise. There is something of the Dead Sea apple in the realization of this promise. If Ruskin be right in holding that a house should be of the general color of the soil on which it stands, Tucson may lay claim to great artistic merit. It is entirely of adobe brick of the natural mud-color. ”

“ How quickly it grows! Its great leaves, more or less tattered by friction, flap and rustle above your head like banners and sails as you walk about in the tropical plantation. It is called the "bread of the tropics." An acre of land will produce enough of it to support fifty people, whereas an acre in wheat will support only two. If the tropics had had a good deal harder time in getting their bread, by-the-way, they would not have been in so down-trodden and slipshod a condition.
I will not say that we had the better coffee at our hotel for being in its own country. ”

“ Farm-houses are few, and not at all "elegant." The hills are of the color of camel's hide, and not unlike the camel's humps.
At Millbrae, finally, there is a glimpse of the wooden towers, in the American style, of a villa, and a large dairy barn. At Belmont the low hills are close at hand. At Menlo Park a charming flower-bed is cared for, by the track, as at foreign railway-stations. We are in the chosen site for villa residences of the San Francisco millionnaires. ”

“ Three days farther on is Chilpancingo, to which also complimentary terms—in a lesser measure than Iguala— may be applied. It is the capital of this rugged Guerrero, a state named after the patriot general, who was once, like our own Marcos and Vincente Lopez, a muleteer. It contains an ornate Government-house, a zocalo with a music-stand; and we met here a colonel of the detachment of cavalry guarding the country, gotten up in such dapper civilian riding-dress as if for a promenade in Central Park. Population—but populations are hard to get at in Mexico. ”

“ As Mexico has not, until lately, at any rate, expected tourists, there are almost none of the usual appurtenances for their pleasure and information to be met with. While this may have its annoyances, if an ardent curiosity be battled too long, on the other hand freedom from the sense of responsibility to exacting Baedekers and Murrays has advantages of its own. The visitor with an eye for the picturesque dips into a delicious feast of novelties, makes discoveries on every hand, and has the pleasure of testing the value of his own unaided conclusions. ”

“ The views from the hills are of no common order. As you rise on the Cable road you hang in the air above the body of the city, and above the harbor and its environment. The Clay Street road, one of the steepest, passes through the Chinese quarter. Half-way up an ensign, of a blue-and-crimson dragon on an orange field, on the Chinese Consulate-general, flies, a bright bit of color in the foreground. The bay, far below the eye, has an opaque look. ”

“ The city of Orizaba is an important small place, the scene of a dashing surprise of the Mexicans by the French, at the hill of El Borrego. It has charming torrents, which furnish water-power for cotton and paper mills. One of these torrents, conveyed in an arched aqueduct, turns the machinery of the ingenio, or sugar plantation, of Jalapilla, once a country residence of Maximilian.
A delegation of relatives had come down the night before to await our young couple here. What embracing and chattering! A Mexican embrace has a character of its own. ”

“ The difficulty of raising money induces the government to put on the screws, and use undue parsimony towards the public servants. This leads to smuggling and official corruption that deplete by the wholesale the already scanty revenue, throttles what little productive industry yet remained, and kindles again the blaze of revolution. Partly through these causes, and partly as a tradition from the old Spanish domination, Mexico is cursed with the worst system of extortionate imposts known to modern times. ”

“ Two other sides of the square are occupied by long arcades, among the merchants of which, protected from the sun and rain, one may wander by the hour, watching the shrewd devices of trade, and picking up those knickknacks, trifling in the country of their origin, which are certain to be curiosities elsewhere. From time to time pass across the view, dark and Egyptian-like, in a peculiar dress of bluish woollen, trudging under heavy burdens, Indians who have yet preserved the tradition of their race. ”

“ My genial guide had planted coffee himself. Much money has been lost at it, it seems, and it cannot be very profitable except under economical processes and an improved market. When transportation becomes cheaper we shall have introduced into the United States from Mexico also many choice fruits, notably the fine Manilla mango, not now known. The fruits of the country grow on you with experience. To my taste the juicy mango, which at its best combines something of the melon, pine-apple, peach, and pear, is the most delicious of them all. ”

“ We were taken off in small boats, and our ship unloaded by lighters, for there is not one of these Mexican harbors where a ship can lie up to a wharf in safety.
More than the usual embarrassments await the ordinary traveller on the quay at Vera Cruz, by so much as he is apt to know less of Spanish than of French—in which most of the dearly-bought early foreign experience is acquired—and nobody will tell him the truth. Let it be fixed in mind that but one train a day starts for the capital, and this at eleven at night. ”